Long-Distance Samaritan : Peace Corps Days Are Over but Nurse Still Finds Ways to Help

Drought and famine were driving farmers off the land and into rural villages in the African nation of Niger. Desperate mothers, their babies covered in running sores, sat distraught beneath trees outside the Peace Corps offices where Amanda Wash worked as a nurse.

Wash would treat the youngsters with whatever medicines were available, until the supplies ran out.

“We would give them salves for the sores. Vitamins. Cough syrup. Anything that was available,” said Wash, adding that up to 100 people a day would gather, hoping to get some help from the Americans.

Searing images of children with distended bellies--a sure sign of starvation--remained with her after her stint as a Peace Corps volunteer ended in the mid-1970s and she returned to Los Angeles.

“I don’t see how anybody can live in a land of plenty as we do and not try to reach out and help people who have so little,” she said.

For the past 13 years, Wash has been the moving force behind shipping to Africa more than 25 tons of medicine, clothing and medical supplies--antibiotics, EKG machines, hospital beds, kidney dialysis machines, wheelchairs, crutches, walkers.

Wash has sent more than 50 shipments to African countries. British Airways has donated space to carry 1,500 pounds of supplies, including baby aspirin, cough syrup, salves for diaper rash and anti-diarrhea medicines.

“I feel the kids are the future,” Wash said. “You help a kid, you help a country. Any kid you can rear and help is going to make a difference in this world. You have a strong healthy child, and it’s going to develop into a strong healthy country.”

When the retired nurse--a divorced woman in her 60s, with a daughter who lives in Detroit--is reminded that thousands of children in Los Angeles need attention, she quietly responds: “Our community is the world.”

Even now, whenever Wash sees television footage showing victims of the drought and famine ravaging Somalia, she has flashbacks to her days in Niger.

“When you see a kid on sticks instead of crutches, you think: ‘How can I get some over there?’ ” she said.

Wash has been finding ways to send aid to Africa with donations from charities, pharmaceutical companies, physicians, moving companies and airlines.

Her first donation of medical supplies came from the Direct Relief Foundation, a nonprofit medical assistance and disaster relief organization based in Santa Barbara. Bekins Moving and Storage donates boxes and British Airways has been making space available aboard its flights for 10 years.

“I just go and ask,” Wash said. “I have to go just on faith because I don’t belong to any organized group. So it has to be just me.”

Three years ago she enlisted the aid of the Concerned Black Pediatricians of Los Angeles, a group of about 30 physicians who have been instrumental in helping her get pharmaceutical and medical supplies from manufacturers.

“We started calling around to see if anybody had some supplies or equipment that might help these kids overseas,” said Dr. Lloyd Hunter, 57, a member of the group. “It’s kind of encouraging to see people like her because she could be going to Las Vegas.”

Wash’s quiet style--operating without fanfare--was a big part of why his group decided to pitch in, Hunter said.

“You see how little it requires to effect a significant improvement in the kids’ care,” he said. “That’s the beauty of dealing with children. They respond so well.”

In the 1970s, Wash quit her nursing job at Kaiser Permanente to join the Peace Corps because she wanted to “get away and see Africa.” After returning to Los Angeles, she began organizing shipments of medical supplies while serving as a volunteer on the mayor’s Sister City Committee.

She traveled to Lukasa, Zambia, Los Angeles’ African sister city, in 1979 and “everyone asked if we could send supplies, help with the hospitals, mental institutions,” she said. “In the mental hospitals, you actually could see people tied to trees.”

Wash left the Sister City Committee in 1987, but representatives from various charitable organizations continued to call her and offer supplies that they had waiting to send to Africa. She said she also received calls and letters from Africa asking for supplies.

“I had to keep the ball rolling,” she said. “I had to keep the doors open. There was just no way I could say no.”

Three months after leaving the committee, Wash sent another shipment of medicine to Zambia where malnutrition, measles, tuberculosis, and poor sanitation are chronic problems.

“The water they drink is contaminated,” Hunter said. “They don’t have the water purification systems we have here, so they acquire cholera which causes diarrhea.”

Last summer, an official at Lusaka’s University Teaching Hospital wrote Wash, telling her “it is really gratifying to note that there are people like yourself who feel strongly for the plight and suffering of other people miles away from themselves.”

In 1985, Wash went to Mozambique and found conditions worse than they were in Zambia. She organized a shipment of more than 24,000 pounds of clothing--pants, shirts, coats--to that country.

As civil war devastated Somalia in 1991, she and the four volunteers who help her shipped half a ton of medical supplies to that embattled country. She has also sent medicine and clothing to Niger, her old Peace Corps host country.

“This life just isn’t worth living if you can’t help somebody,” Wash said. “I think it’s a commission from God. Sure, you get tired, but . . . when you look in a kid’s eyes, you know he’s totally dependent on somebody for help.”